Fine for not beginning lease

[Ken M Middleton]

Hey all,

We've just purchased our third house and had our first person back out of our lease after doing a few things for them to sign it to make the house move-in ready and pushing the lease start date out a few weeks. This potentially caused us to lose out on a few other tenants who were ready to begin the lease ASAP, but we decided to go with this couple because they had better credit scores and financial situation.

Does anyone have any advice on ways to prevent this from happening, such as including a fine for people backing out or requesting the security deposit upon signing of the lease?

For our past two houses, we just asked them to pay the security deposit before they got the keys, but now I'm thinking that was a mistake.

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

KMM